


It's you, it's me, and there's dancing

by deoxyribonucleotide



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Awkward Conversations, M/M, Post-Canon, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 11:46:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19767538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deoxyribonucleotide/pseuds/deoxyribonucleotide
Summary: Dancing, Crowley realized, was what they'd been doing all along.





	It's you, it's me, and there's dancing

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Los Campesinos's _You! Me! Dancing!_. You might hate the word 'dancing' after this fic. I am really sorry.
> 
> Unbeta'd, so if there are mistakes, please comment :)

The only thing feet were for, in the beginning, was walking, but time had given them new things to do. Running was popular nowadays—never stopped being popular after some overworked sod invented it way back in the day. Parkour used to be a popular pastime, but it had gone out of vogue and was currently only practiced by a few niche groups. Cycling was another classic, and football—but not the American variant, of course, in which feet played a role rather inessential for a sport named _football_. 

Feet were for walking, yes, but they were also meant for many other things. Feet were, as Crowley realized some time between the first century and the next, for dancing, too, and he supposed it snowballed from there. 

Both sides would try to claim dance as an invention of theirs, because that's what they did best, and did often. But there was no proving anything when in the first place if one asked an angel for a dance they'd sooner smite you than throw one shake of the hip, and what demons got up to hardly qualified as dancing.

Not that Crowley had, at any time, asked anyone at all for a dance. The Arrangement entailed a good number of things, but dancing was not one of them.

Still to him it was one of the greatest things invented; so much fun and it was all in your limbs with nothing else truly needed. While there were dances that called for costumes and props, to him a dance remained a dance despite the absence of its bells and whistles. 

And yet for all that dancing was uncomplicated, lovely fun it was a serious thing, too. There was more to it than just catching the beat, more to the motion than met the eye. There was a science to dance, a logic that looked to the untrained eye nothing more than artful but meaningless flow. 

For all those reasons and more, Crowley loved dancing. His hands and feet itched to dance in the same way he liked to terrify his plants into pristine submission. Dancing felt, in a way, like driving his beloved Bentley—but make no mistake, nothing could match that.

What he didn't know until today was that he'd been dancing for the better part of six thousand years.

"You go too fast for me, Crowley." And with that parting shot Aziraphale went into the muggy, cigarette smoke-laden night. In Crowley's eyes, he shone brighter than the neon signs all plastered around him. _Too fast? Were we dancing?_ If they were, Crowley'd assumed they were going at the same tempo all this time. Moving in step, like they had always done, but it turns out he was wrong.

He wondered where they'd lost sync. He'd thought that after their encounter with the Nazis they were on the same page again. He was already taking it as slow as he could yet it was still too fast for Aziraphale, who'd left like Crowley quashed his foot in the middle of a routine. 

Dancing, Crowley realized, was what they'd been doing all along. Dancing with each other, around each other, around the tenuous thing that hung between them—the thing that Crowley feared would break if he stopped dancing to point it out.

In another year, maybe he'd get another chance to ask, but he would most likely get turned down again. In another century, surely Aziraphale'd be up to his speed, but the world was ending soon, wasn't it? Maybe he would never have the time to ask.

—

Funnily enough, the world did not end, which upset a great many ethereal and occult beings. They had had their swords and pitchforks at the ready for a number of centuries now. If they could wait for that long, surely they could wait again. Time was a silly thing to they who did not die. Patience was the one virtue they needed in abundance.

And yet Crowley and Aziraphale were still dancing. For all it was worth, though the world nearly came crashing down upon them, they were still dancing. Patience was a virtue, alright, but it was one Crowley was quickly running out of.

 _Are you not tired like I am, angel?_ he wanted to ask, whenever they saw each other—and they saw each other a lot. _Or am I misreading things—misreading everything—and we hadn't been dancing together at all?_

—

The dam broke one day when Crowley least expected it. In hindsight, maybe he should have, for this one particular dam had been on the edge of bursting for as long as it had existed.

"Aren't you tired of dancing, angel?" he offered, apropos of nothing, out of breath like he'd run a marathon. 

Aziraphale stopped talking, and fixed him with a questioning look. "I beg your pardon?"

"It's been six thousand years now," Crowley added, knowing full well he wasn't making a lick of sense to Aziraphale, who was now considering him like he had grown another head. (Who was to say he hadn't? Stranger things had happened before.)

But no, it wasn't a head, or an extra arm, or another case of nonessential extremities, it was that they'd been talking about Aziraphale's new favorite pastry shop a mile down the street, and dancing was not the issue. 

Except that it was—it had always been, at least for Crowley. It had always been about this twisted little dance. 

"We've been dancing for six thousand years now, and my feet are tired." _My heart is tired,_ Crowley had truly wanted to say, but he supposed that would've made even less sense. 

"I would appreciate it if you stopped speaking in code, my dear," Aziraphale answered, sounding slightly cross. "I haven't an idea what you're talking about."

"That time you told me I was going too fast," Crowley said. "In the sixties. We were in Soho. Didn't you ever think, that when you said that it like that it sounded like we were dancing?"

"I can't say I have," admitted Aziraphale. He looked like he didn't quite get it yet. 

"It's just that, we _have_ been dancing," iterated Crowley, "for as long as dancing's existed. But it's not the dance you see with the eyes, the kind you do with your feet and your arms. The kind your lot hate, actually, but you've always been different, haven't you, Aziraphale? So, so different."

Aziraphale did not say anything, but he watched Crowley intently like one would a particularly squirmy koi in a pond. It did absolutely nothing for his confidence, but he barreled on.

"We've been dancing. With each other, around each other, hell, even around this—this thing, whatever it is between us," Crowley continued, finally giving voice to the one thing that had been bothering him for so long. "I don't think we can still call it 'fraternizing', can we, angel? We're too far gone for that." 

And because he was really in the deep end now, he might as well dive straight to the bottom: " _I'm_ too far gone for that."

With the world's most convoluted metaphor finally laid to rest, everything was silent for a long time—or at least what seemed like a long time for Crowley. Funny, really, how this minute felt like a century, when a century usually felt like minute to him.

"Say something," he urged. If this blasted silence persisted for a second longer he felt as if he would die on the spot.

"I don't know what to say," cried Aziraphale, and—oh no, what an incontrovertibly _bad_ thing that was, because Aziraphale was not the type to be rendered speechless. "If I've gathered anything correctly, is it that we've been dancing together while believing the other thought nothing of it?"

Crowley took nearly as long as Aziraphale did earlier to parse the sentence, but the implication hit him like a freight train. "You thought that I thought nothing of it?"

Aziraphale coughed daintily. "Well, if you didn't, then surely _less_ than what I thought of it."

"But you can't be—that can't be true," Crowley whined. "Didn't you feel it at all? Are you not a being—"

"I'm not sure we're talking about the same 'it' anymore, Crowley."

Frustrated, Crowley growled, "I'm talking about love, angel. I've been a sorry fool in love for longer than humans have had written history, and I thought all this time you knew." Then, in a voice as small as he felt in this moment, he added, "and I think that you've been dancing around it because you didn't love me, too."

"You truly are a fool, serpent," Aziraphale snapped. Well, that wasn't the reaction Crowley was hoping for in the slightest. Alpha Centauri was starting to sound like a choice again. "I had just told you that I thought you didn't love me back; you don't get to repeat my words!"

"When?" 

"I told you I figured you'd thought nothing of it—of our little 'dance'!"

"So if you thought I didn't love you the same way you loved me," Crowley began, "and I thought the same, but the other way around…" 

Heaven and hell help him, if he were wrong he wouldn't know how to live again. "Does that mean we've loved each other all this time?"

There was another pregnant pause, but it was softer now, a little brighter. 

"I suppose it does, in a way," conceded Aziraphale. In a way, in a completely off-the-walls maddeningly _stupid_ way, it did.

"We're both fools, then, for missing that," said Crowley. This was probably one of the weirdest conversations they've had, and they were completely sober. He shuddered to think about the worse disaster it would've been if they were drunk. Or would it have been easier? In any case, that this even happened was enough for him. He was starting to think another apocalypse had to be averted before they'd get to this part.

Aziraphale let out a sigh. "Indeed we are. Am I right in saying this is when we stop dancing around each other for good? And start dancing, together, in earnest?"

For a couple of fools, this was easier than Crowley thought it would be. Who knew 'I love you' could be said in so many different, confusing ways? "Yes, it is. I love you, just so we're clear again. But hey! I think we should dance, for real, you know. Just to celebrate. Hell knows you could use a dance other than the gavotte."

To his delight, Aziraphale humored him. Crowley found that dancing, as long as it were with Aziraphale, trumped driving his Bentley any day.


End file.
